What we are asking you to do
You are being asked one question: do the data presented support the claims made? Everything below is in service of answering it.
You are not being asked whether the result is exciting, whether it agrees with your own work, or whether you would have designed the study differently. A sound study with a modest finding is publishable. A thrilling finding that the data do not support is not.
Your report is published with the article under your name unless you ask otherwise, so write it as a professional document addressed to a colleague — specific, evidenced, and free of anything you would not say to the author's face.
The CRMSSS review form
Every review uses this structure. Score each domain, then justify the score in prose — the prose is what matters and the score is only there to make disagreement between reviewers visible to the editor. Rate each: Adequate, Needs work, or Serious concern, and mark Not applicable where a domain genuinely does not apply.
| Domain | The question to answer | Look specifically for |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Scope and importance | Does this belong in a journal of screening, surveillance and survivorship, and does it add anything? | Whether the question has already been settled; whether a negative or confirmatory result is being presented honestly as such. |
| 2. Design | Can this design answer the question asked? | Control selection, blinding where possible, prospective vs retrospective framing, whether the comparator reflects current practice. |
| 3. Cohort and setting | Who is in this study, and to whom does it generalise? | Inclusion and exclusion criteria, consecutive vs selected enrolment, attrition and how it is handled, single- vs multi-centre. |
| 4. Dosimetry and technique | Is the radiation delivery reported in enough detail to be reproduced? | Prescription and fractionation, planning technique, image guidance, organ-at-risk constraints, dose reporting conventions, quality assurance. |
| 5. Endpoints | Are the outcomes prespecified, defined, and measured the same way in every arm? | Toxicity grading scale and version, surveillance interval and modality, whether the primary endpoint changed between registration and report. |
| 6. Statistics | Are the analyses appropriate, and is the uncertainty honestly represented? | Power, multiplicity, competing risks in survivorship data, immortal time bias, missing data handling, confidence intervals rather than bare p-values. |
| 7. Interpretation | Do the conclusions stay inside what was measured? | Causal language applied to observational data; extrapolation beyond the dose, site, or population studied; limitations that are listed but not confronted. |
| 8. Reporting and ethics | Is the reporting complete and the study properly governed? | Applicable reporting checklist, trial registration, ethics approval and consent, conflicts and funding, data availability. |
| 9. Clarity | Could a competent reader in an adjacent specialty follow this? | Figure legends that stand alone, tables that agree with the text, abbreviations defined once. |
How to structure the written report
- A short summary of the paper in your own words. One paragraph. It shows the author you understood the work, and it lets the editor see quickly whether two reviewers even read the same claims.
- Your overall assessment and recommended decision, stated up front rather than buried.
- Major points — numbered, each identifying a specific problem and, where you can, what would resolve it. "The analysis ignores competing risk of non-cardiac death; a Fine–Gray model would address this" is useful. "The statistics are weak" is not.
- Minor points — numbered separately, with page and line references.
- What is good about the paper. Not politeness; information. An editor weighing conflicting reviews needs to know what you thought the work achieved.
- Your conflict-of-interest declaration, even when it is "none".
Time, and payment
We ask for a completed report within 21 days of accepting an invitation. If you cannot make that, decline the invitation — declining promptly is a real service, and we would much rather have a fast no than a slow yes. Suggesting an alternative reviewer when you decline is welcome and never expected.
CRMSSS pays its reviewers. Review is skilled professional work and the convention of extracting it for free is one of the things this journal exists to stop doing. The current rate per completed review, and the terms, are set out in the reviewer invitation before you commit to anything. Re-review of a revised manuscript is paid separately.
Payment is for a completed review delivered on time. It is emphatically not payment for a favourable one, and an editor who observed any relationship between the two would remove the reviewer from the panel.
Confidentiality, and the AI rule
A manuscript under review is a confidential document. Until it is published you may not share it, quote it, circulate it within your department, or use its results to inform your own work or a competing submission. If you would like a trainee to co-review with you — which we encourage, it is how reviewers are made — tell the editor first and name them, and they will be credited on the published report.
Do not paste any part of a manuscript into a public or third-party AI tool. Uploading an unpublished manuscript to a general-purpose chatbot is a breach of confidentiality regardless of the vendor's retention policy, because the author never consented to it. You may use AI tools you run privately for language editing of your own report. If AI assisted your review in any way, say so in the report — it will be published with it. The judgement must be yours; you are accountable for every sentence you sign.
If you suspect misconduct
Do not confront the authors and do not raise it in the public report. Contact the editor directly at office@curerays.com with what you observed and any evidence you have — a prior publication of the same figure, an implausible data pattern, an unattributed passage. Suspicion is not a finding, and the journal follows a defined process for assessing it, set out in Publication Ethics.
Join the reviewer panel
Write to us with your areas of expertise — radiation oncology, cardio-oncology, medical physics, epidemiology, survivorship care — and the editorial team will be in touch.